A primary focus of public education, literacy learning is a foundational aspect of an individual's educational development. Ideally, every student would become a skilled reader and writer. Importantly, literacy skill has become more vital than ever. As our society increasingly relies upon newly developed digital technologies, the use of those technologies often requires fluent literacy skills. To learn these skills, our society provides its children literacy instruction. Literacy instruction typically encompasses a variety of activities, among which assessment is crucial. In the process of literacy learning, feedback on one's performance allows the learner to adjust his/her behavior, so as to improve. However, this feedback requires an accurate assessment of the learner's performance, which may be performed by a skilled teacher. The present invention automates some of this assessment. By improving the assessment of basic literacy skills, the present invention could greatly benefit literacy instruction.
Literacy instruction typically involves a variety of activities, intended to develop the range students' literacy skills, from high-level problem-solving (e.g., literary analyses) to low-level skills (e.g., reading comprehension). The long-running controversy between ‘whole language’ and ‘basic skills’ has been largely settled: most experts agree that both approaches are important. Accordingly, educators generally recognize that high-level literacy abilities crucially depend upon fluent low-level skills. The present invention assesses the latter.
Many literacy teachers face the formidable challenge of finding the right balance between high-level and low-level literacy skills. How much instructional time should literacy teachers devote to basic skills? The answer largely depends upon the relative development of students' literacy skills. In U.S. schools, students' literacy skills often encompass a wide range, from the highly literate to the almost illiterate. While assessing basic literacy skills may be important for the former, it is imperative for the latter. For students struggling to master literacy, assessment should monitor the development of basic literacy skills.
Existing methods of student assessment include assignment completion, progress monitoring, and summative assessment. Each category has its advantages, along with significant disadvantages and limitations. To varying extents, all existing methods of literacy assessment are laborious, time-consuming, and/or provide little information to guide instruction.
For literacy teachers, assessment efforts are often limited to assignment completion. Among other benefits, class assignments provide students with relevant practice. Class assignments are closely integrated to the teachers' curriculum, which are typically designed to engage students in intellectually challenging and interesting topics. Unfortunately, as conventionally implemented, class assignments provide teachers with very limited information about the development of students' literacy skills.
Some teachers specifically assess the development of students' literacy skills. For this ‘progress monitoring,’ several assessments are commercially available (e.g. DIBELS), whether in printed and digital form. When properly administered and scored, these assessments can provide a useful window onto students' literacy skills. Arguably, these assessments are optimal when administered to specific individuals or small groups, whom teachers suspect of having literacy difficulties. However, existing methods of progress monitoring assessment have a few major drawbacks. First, they typically do not integrate well with teacher's curriculum. Second, the test items occupy students in repetitive, relatively simplistic exercises, sometimes referred to as ‘drill and kill’. Instead, most language arts teacher prefer assigning activities that engage students in higher level problem-solving. The present invention addresses these drawbacks.
Lastly, most primary and secondary schools administer summative assessments, which provide stakeholders with information about the development of students' literacy skills. From a psychometric perspective, these assessments can provide accurate measurement of students' literacy skills. However, summative assessments also have some serious drawbacks. Existing methods of summative assessment typically: (a) do not integrate into teachers' curriculum and (b) disrupt schools' normal routines and schedule. This measurement typically occurs at a single point in time, typically the end of the academic year—or increasingly, throughout the year! Existing summative assessments suffer from these and other drawbacks; consequently, their ecological validity has often been questioned.
Overall, existing methods of literacy assessment address three different purposes: assignment completion, progress monitoring, and summative evaluation. As a new method of progress monitoring, the present invention addresses the drawbacks of existing methods. Further, when used by teachers, it might also provide benefits for assignment completion and summative evaluation.